[java] A decent gui builder?

First, if you haven't yet, you'll need to decide if it's gonna be swing or swt. I suppose awt is pretty much out of the question these days.

The unfortunate consequence is that it's probably still going to be faster to code the gui by hand :S. Apart from the numerous independent builders out there, there's a gui builder included with NetBeans, I think, and as an add-on package to Eclipse that supports both swing and swt (VE, the visual editor for eclipse. Download all the needed extension packages, there's 4 of em I think, and then select "new visual class" to fire it up). Then there's another gui builder on top of VE, the name escapes me right now. Quick search did turn up "jvider" as a plugin for eclipse, so you might want to try that if you are unhappy with VE itself. The short answer is, you'll have to try out a couple of the eclipse plugins, as there are several, and see if one of them increases your productivity.

Edit: sorry that I can't recommend anything. I can say one thing though, and that is that eclipse VE is rather unstable and not much of a help in designing forms. But YMMV.

Thanks I got it installed and it seems ok, looks like I'll still have to tweak the code a little by hand but its better than writing it all out myself

JBuilder personal edition has a built in GUI editor if you have trouble with the Eclipse plug-in.

Thanks, the plug in seems ok for now but I'll bear it in mind

A very good GUI Builder for Eclipse is Windowbuilder by Instantiations. My favorite! Big problem its not free but try, its worth it in my opinion.
Always a good idea is to search at http://www.eclipse-plugins.info/eclipse/index.jsp. Many free and not so free ^^' plugins for Ecplise.